What a beautiful day, and a good one for a heapin' helpin' of Gogol Bordello.
I woke up thinking of this song.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Friday, February 01, 2008
Wow. Thanks for the link, Kimmer.
Go to this Bridge Tracker and enter a route you travel, and then it will tell you the condition of the bridges along the way. Eep.
Go to this Bridge Tracker and enter a route you travel, and then it will tell you the condition of the bridges along the way. Eep.
What did I tell you about catty British papers?
Lily Allen's baby brother Alfie is taking over the Daniel Radcliffe role in the play Equus. The star plays a stable boy who *ahem* is put through his paces by some shameless hussy.
This article in the UK Mirror unctuously bemoaned the density of Alfie's er, uh, body hair, as the actor must appear fully nude in the role. I kept picturing Peter Lorre rubbing his hands together in anticipation. Apparently, Alfie received constructive criticism and tamed the wild undergrowth. The article goes to great lengths to mention the immaculate topiary of the Harry Potter star Radcliffe. Uh. I don't even know where to go with that one.
Try this verbiage on for size:
Happily the once unruly Alfie is a reformed character and recently beat off competition from nearly 200 actors across Britain to bag the part.Corny AND tacky. I am at once horrified and delighted. Sheesh.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Call me old-fashioned, but this is my kind of stove. Finally, someone is doing something pleasing with stoves as has not been done in the past 50 or so years. It's also available in turquoise and 8 or 9 other colors. Yum! If I had the vast sums required to populate a kitchen with these little glories, I'd probably go wonky and mis-match them all. That would be nice, right?This range is from Elmira Stove Works, and they are doing for refrigerators, dishwashers and microwaves what they did for the range; i.e, make them look good again. It's bloody well time someone did that, if you ax me. The good news is that for the price of about 5 pair of Christian Louboutins, you can own one of the refrigerators. The bad news is the Christian Louboutins will set you back $600 or so, per pair. But what object is money when one considers the happiness of their kitchen??? *sigh*
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Golly, it's good to be home.
I got to spend quality time cutting up with my two favorite aunts, and it was good to see so much family all at once. I found a hillbilly post card that made me giggle (watch for it in the mail, Hols & jpg), and it's always good to see my original home, however briefly.
Monday night, I walked out of Grandpa's front door into the inky blackness only afforded by being many zip codes removed from large towns. The front of the house was sheltered from the wind and the night almost seemed still, but I could hear the crackling rustle of countless millions of dried leaves hanging in huge trees, buffeted wildly by fierce winds. This was magical. Moments like that especially make me want to live in the country-- that is truly the rich life.
After the service and everything, I said my goodbyes to everyone and then stopped by the local foodstore to pick up some hillbilly postcards I'd seen earlier. At the register in front of me, a woman was holding the most serene looking sleeping baby boy. I remarked on what a dandy he was, and she proudly agreed, saying the nice man in the butcher department had just weighed him for her and he weighs 16 pounds, having doubled in weight since he was born. Now, I thought this kid was maybe 7 or 8 months old. No. He was 4 months. I was just getting a kick out of imagining someone weighing their kid in the meat department of a supermarket. CHARMED! Norman Rockwell should have done a painting like that.
But then, it all took a turn for the sublimely twisted: the cashier said "oh, my second one was the same way-- the doctor told me at his one week check up to go ahead and give him regular food, just be careful at first." We gasped our astonishment, and she followed up with the delightful kicker "well, he was born with a tooth!"
*BLISS*
This made my week. Love stuff like that. Let's just say I'll never pass through that town without stopping in that store-- you never know what'll happen. Maybe I need to swing by the meat department, too.
________________
Driving home Tuesday afternoon was windier than a bag of buttholes. Saw a transformer blow nearby, and that was spectacular. Siding and signs were flying all over the place, and you could see that every driver was struggling to maintain control of their vehicles. Add violent gusts to the winding, hilly roads and that makes for some interesting driving.
----------------
Listened to a bit of Harold Budd. The last few funerals I've attended, I've sort of slipped into a mode of listening to his music. I find it calming and contemplative. If you are not into ambient/electronica, you may still recognize the sound of Harold Budd's hand in the music of the video below. Harold's music was used to brilliantly score the The American Experience special on the Donner Party. Stark, austere piano seemed the perfect counterpoint to the enormity of the challenge faced by those on that grim adventure.
Of course, at times like this, one will be philosophical. Budd's music is light and shadow in the same way the most gilt-edged clouds must be dark in the center to contrast the glorious edges. I believe we think of our lives as extended backward, aggregated by our familiarity with history and epochs other than our own. In truth, the fullness of time for each of us is only our tiny window in this existence. Despite the sorrow of the loss of loved ones, it is good that we are forced to face our own limitations and learn to make the most of our time here, that our time may truly be full.
The funeral was stately, dignified and poetic. The local VFW was representing and the military honors were a grand send-off, indeed.
Harold Budd & Cocteau Twins
Sea, Swallow Me [The Moon & The Melodies]
I hope your day is a beautiful one.
I got to spend quality time cutting up with my two favorite aunts, and it was good to see so much family all at once. I found a hillbilly post card that made me giggle (watch for it in the mail, Hols & jpg), and it's always good to see my original home, however briefly.
Monday night, I walked out of Grandpa's front door into the inky blackness only afforded by being many zip codes removed from large towns. The front of the house was sheltered from the wind and the night almost seemed still, but I could hear the crackling rustle of countless millions of dried leaves hanging in huge trees, buffeted wildly by fierce winds. This was magical. Moments like that especially make me want to live in the country-- that is truly the rich life.
After the service and everything, I said my goodbyes to everyone and then stopped by the local foodstore to pick up some hillbilly postcards I'd seen earlier. At the register in front of me, a woman was holding the most serene looking sleeping baby boy. I remarked on what a dandy he was, and she proudly agreed, saying the nice man in the butcher department had just weighed him for her and he weighs 16 pounds, having doubled in weight since he was born. Now, I thought this kid was maybe 7 or 8 months old. No. He was 4 months. I was just getting a kick out of imagining someone weighing their kid in the meat department of a supermarket. CHARMED! Norman Rockwell should have done a painting like that.
But then, it all took a turn for the sublimely twisted: the cashier said "oh, my second one was the same way-- the doctor told me at his one week check up to go ahead and give him regular food, just be careful at first." We gasped our astonishment, and she followed up with the delightful kicker "well, he was born with a tooth!"
*BLISS*
This made my week. Love stuff like that. Let's just say I'll never pass through that town without stopping in that store-- you never know what'll happen. Maybe I need to swing by the meat department, too.
________________
Driving home Tuesday afternoon was windier than a bag of buttholes. Saw a transformer blow nearby, and that was spectacular. Siding and signs were flying all over the place, and you could see that every driver was struggling to maintain control of their vehicles. Add violent gusts to the winding, hilly roads and that makes for some interesting driving.
----------------
Listened to a bit of Harold Budd. The last few funerals I've attended, I've sort of slipped into a mode of listening to his music. I find it calming and contemplative. If you are not into ambient/electronica, you may still recognize the sound of Harold Budd's hand in the music of the video below. Harold's music was used to brilliantly score the The American Experience special on the Donner Party. Stark, austere piano seemed the perfect counterpoint to the enormity of the challenge faced by those on that grim adventure.
Of course, at times like this, one will be philosophical. Budd's music is light and shadow in the same way the most gilt-edged clouds must be dark in the center to contrast the glorious edges. I believe we think of our lives as extended backward, aggregated by our familiarity with history and epochs other than our own. In truth, the fullness of time for each of us is only our tiny window in this existence. Despite the sorrow of the loss of loved ones, it is good that we are forced to face our own limitations and learn to make the most of our time here, that our time may truly be full.
The funeral was stately, dignified and poetic. The local VFW was representing and the military honors were a grand send-off, indeed.
Harold Budd & Cocteau Twins
Sea, Swallow Me [The Moon & The Melodies]
I hope your day is a beautiful one.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
Sourpuss 101.
My Grandpa is a big bag of contradictions. He likes to be kind and helpful to people, but he can be a withering critic. He loves to laugh and cut up, and yet he takes himself very seriously. Perhaps a little too seriously. He also has an exacting memory for when other people fall short of the glory of himself, and he never forgets. This said, he probably still thinks of me as the wild granddaughter with pink hair. Well, he's still right about the wild bit, but anyhoo...
At my Grandma's funeral 1.5 years ago, my great-uncle W. told my brother "I guess the next funeral y'all come up for will be mine." W. had been having health issues, and apparently he felt his time was short even though at about 77 he was younger than my grandpa by at least 15 years.
About 5 months ago, W was driving home one day, wife in the passenger side. Doctors think W had a teeny stroke and passed out behind the wheel, wrecking the vehicle and suffering a spinal injury in the process. Since then, W has been paralyzed from the neck down and in the hospital.
tralalalalalalalallala
When I went to see Grandpa at Thanksgiving, he launched into a story about hauling livestock in a big truck, driving multiple runs from- and to- Indiana to make money in the 1940s. Grandpa asked W to drive so he could get some sleep. Well, W dozed off and nearly wrecked the truck, awakening Grandpa in the process. Being the one-strike & you're out kind of guy, W was forever in Grandpa's mind firmly cemented as someone-who-goes-to-sleep-whilst-driving. Nodding-off behind the wheel as a teenager is on par with being a wife-beater: having achieved the title, you must don the sobriquet in perpetuity. Myself, even if the event last year WAS the result of falling asleep, I'm going to give a body a pass on only slipping up twice in 8 decades on earth. Call me lax.
tralalalalalalalallala
There was talk, of course. Grandpa will not be dissuaded from his quaint views of the universe. The one notion that likely saved him utterly from blaming W for this accident is probably the nagging suspicion that the one in the car with the ovaries was behind the wheel and caused the accident. After all, what moron thought it was a good ideer to have women drivers?
tralalalalalalalallala
Incidentally, Uncle W was in the Air Force. I've heard tell he was part of the crew that analyzed the MiG of the defecting Russian in the late 70s, the first MiG the US military got to interfere with in the Biblical sense. He was an aircraft mechanic, a brilliant man, a capable farmer, forest ranger, an enterprising man, and none of his children have embarrassed the family by breeding-out-of-wedlock or having non-Baptists in woodpiles and such. W passed away early Saturday morning, and we'll miss him. Bless you, Uncle W.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Strange days indeed.
Last night I dreamt I was in India staying at a little cabin thingie, and I wanted to go into a village and have dinner, so someone sent me a camel. Well, I climbed on and grabbed onto the rope and this thing hauled ass - I was hanging on by the rope, flying behind the camel like a banner. Mid-gallop, it occurred to me that I was sposta be hanging onto a rope near the front of the camel, instead of that swag festooning the hind-end. At the rental company as I was about to head back to the cabin, they gave me sweet, middling-sized elephant this time, and that was SOOOO much better.
Sunday I saw a strange sight: in the middle of a disused, weed-clotted former concrete parking lot was a lone green balloon on a white ribbon floating about 5 feet above the ground, no one and nothing around it. Pooled on the parking lot was a couple more feet of ribbon. I wish I'd had my camera and not been in a hurry. I like to imagine it floated over from the Fort Worth Stock Show, and that some little kid would be happy to know their balloon came back down to earth so gently.
Last night I dreamt I was in India staying at a little cabin thingie, and I wanted to go into a village and have dinner, so someone sent me a camel. Well, I climbed on and grabbed onto the rope and this thing hauled ass - I was hanging on by the rope, flying behind the camel like a banner. Mid-gallop, it occurred to me that I was sposta be hanging onto a rope near the front of the camel, instead of that swag festooning the hind-end. At the rental company as I was about to head back to the cabin, they gave me sweet, middling-sized elephant this time, and that was SOOOO much better.
Sunday I saw a strange sight: in the middle of a disused, weed-clotted former concrete parking lot was a lone green balloon on a white ribbon floating about 5 feet above the ground, no one and nothing around it. Pooled on the parking lot was a couple more feet of ribbon. I wish I'd had my camera and not been in a hurry. I like to imagine it floated over from the Fort Worth Stock Show, and that some little kid would be happy to know their balloon came back down to earth so gently.
Just plain crazy
I know hypochondria comes in varying degrees in various people. Baby sis is a little paranoid about her health, but then again, she likes running for miles and miles. *insane* As she is a fun banterer/partner-in-crime and has produced my adored niece and nephew, I sort of give her a pass on the running. Because there's enough good in her personality, she gets a pass on the health freaky-outy-ness, too.
Another thing that helps to temper my view of paranoid people is that at one point I worked with an actual hypochodriac, and she's sort of the gold standard for me for medical weirdness and obsession. Jean's preoccupation with health problems made my affection for shoes seem like a passing fancy.
Her sons were grown, and I think she was still married, but obviously needed something extreme with which to fill her time. She was in her mid-50s and had a good, steady income with great medical benefits, so I suppose she was bored and off-to-the-races on the health front. Jean seemed to be out of work a lot, having surgery on this or that.
I was about 20 at the time, life was a grand adventure and I was preparing for my first trip to Europe. I, too, had security and financial freedom and it was just good to be alive. Jean was like a living diorama sort of exhibit for me, a peek in to another stripe of weirdness than I'd been exposed to with my very healthy, hardy family: genuinely freaky.
One day, Jean treated me to one of those conversations one never forgets. I was a social butterfly and made a habit of talking to various people at break, asking about their lives, and this particular day was her turn--lucky thing! Talking with her was sort of this vague, freeform conversation of fragmented sentences, Jean occasionally drifting off into her own head (she was my conversational role model). So, anyhoo, she started telling me she had headaches that wouldn't go away, and the doctors couldn't figure out why. In a conversational equivalent of T-boning someone at an intersection, she'd been rambling about her pain and cranial pressure then suddenly looked into my eyes and asked "do you think I should have brain surgery?" I was dying to say something like "if you're asking a 20 year old who hasn't been to medical school if you should have brain surgery, then, yeah, you probably need your brain worked on," but I didn't. I said something like "I think you should do what your doctors advise." I also for an instant teetered on the brink of suggesting a half-measure like trepanning, but that would be mean, wouldn't it?
These days when hypochondria comes whizzing by driving half in the median with its blinker flashing perpetually even though there's no exit for miles and with a wheel that looks like it's going to fly off at any moment, I recognize it for what it is: just plain crazy.
I know hypochondria comes in varying degrees in various people. Baby sis is a little paranoid about her health, but then again, she likes running for miles and miles. *insane* As she is a fun banterer/partner-in-crime and has produced my adored niece and nephew, I sort of give her a pass on the running. Because there's enough good in her personality, she gets a pass on the health freaky-outy-ness, too.
Another thing that helps to temper my view of paranoid people is that at one point I worked with an actual hypochodriac, and she's sort of the gold standard for me for medical weirdness and obsession. Jean's preoccupation with health problems made my affection for shoes seem like a passing fancy.
Her sons were grown, and I think she was still married, but obviously needed something extreme with which to fill her time. She was in her mid-50s and had a good, steady income with great medical benefits, so I suppose she was bored and off-to-the-races on the health front. Jean seemed to be out of work a lot, having surgery on this or that.
I was about 20 at the time, life was a grand adventure and I was preparing for my first trip to Europe. I, too, had security and financial freedom and it was just good to be alive. Jean was like a living diorama sort of exhibit for me, a peek in to another stripe of weirdness than I'd been exposed to with my very healthy, hardy family: genuinely freaky.
One day, Jean treated me to one of those conversations one never forgets. I was a social butterfly and made a habit of talking to various people at break, asking about their lives, and this particular day was her turn--lucky thing! Talking with her was sort of this vague, freeform conversation of fragmented sentences, Jean occasionally drifting off into her own head (she was my conversational role model). So, anyhoo, she started telling me she had headaches that wouldn't go away, and the doctors couldn't figure out why. In a conversational equivalent of T-boning someone at an intersection, she'd been rambling about her pain and cranial pressure then suddenly looked into my eyes and asked "do you think I should have brain surgery?" I was dying to say something like "if you're asking a 20 year old who hasn't been to medical school if you should have brain surgery, then, yeah, you probably need your brain worked on," but I didn't. I said something like "I think you should do what your doctors advise." I also for an instant teetered on the brink of suggesting a half-measure like trepanning, but that would be mean, wouldn't it?
These days when hypochondria comes whizzing by driving half in the median with its blinker flashing perpetually even though there's no exit for miles and with a wheel that looks like it's going to fly off at any moment, I recognize it for what it is: just plain crazy.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
Tonight I started puttering around in my studio and I found a big fabulous stash of coral and turquoise beads that I bought last year. It was like Christmas morning. One other thing I re-discovered was a 16" strand of drilled rough diamond beads. I used 28 gauge sterling wire and started making little links of the teeniest seed pearls on either side of each diamond. Of course, these diamonds just look like super-sparkly rocks, but I think they are kind of neat.
What's funny is that when I started doing this wrap technique a long time ago, I preferred big wire that was more easily managed, but now I can work micro without even thinking about it. This little strand is about 5" and took about 30 minutes to do. I bought some 22 and 24 gauge 10K gold wire last week, but in the end, that stuff is too dear for crap diamonds. Besides, wire that size wouldn't fit in the teeny holes. When I finish this piece, I'll post it here for you to see.
Ya know, maybe I should be making flies for fishing? Same sorts of techniques...
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If you liked the electronic rock of Underworld, Siouxsie & the Banshees you should check out Dragons. Love them. Some of their churning melodies and swirling guitars evoke Wax&Wane-era Cocteau Twins. Love this band. Listen to all 4 tracks, but I 'specially love "Where is the Love" where the soaring vocals cross over into a plaintive glory so like that of Brendan Perry from Dead Can Dance.)
The FAA recently altered the departure headings for flights out of Philadelphia, and a pair of home owners grew frustrated when calls the FAA's noise complaint lines yielded only messages that their complaint voice mail box was full. Apparently the new headings bring the outbound planes directly over their residence, and the noise is interrupting their daily (and nightly) lives. They posted a very pointed message on their rooftop in 7' tall letters saying "[intercourse] U FAA" and apparently some pilots have noticed. The FAA may not give a rip, but they at least can't say they haven't been heard, now their story is on msn.com.
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